British retail chain Argos has introduced a £99 tablet designed to take on Tesco’s Hudl, but we’re not sure that it can. Although the Argos MyTablet is £20 cheaper than the Hudl, it also falls short in the spec department.

It has a 1.6GHz dual-core processor and a 7-inch 1024x600 screen and 8GB of storage, while the Hudl packs a quad-core SoC and a 1440x900 display and 16GB of storage. MyTablet ships with what appears to be vanilla Android 4.2.2 with a few preinstalled apps like BBC iPlayer, Angry Birds and Facebook.

Clearly it hasn’t got much going for it, although it look cute and kids should like it.

“Millions of people have bought tablets during the last year but there is still around 75 per cent of the UK population without one. We know that tablets will feature heavily on Christmas lists this year," said John Walden, managing director of Argos. "At just £99.99 the Argos MyTablet is highly competitive with a great specification, and fits neatly in the range of tablets we have on offer.”

We wouldn’t exactly call it competitive as the Hudl offers a vastly superior screen, double the amount of CPU cores and double the amount of internal storage for just 20 quid more.

We must admit that we were overly enthusiastic about Tesco’s dirt cheap Hudl tablet. After all it’s just another cut-price product sold by a supermarket, but as soon as the price and spec was announced we said Tesco nailed it.

Now the company says it managed to sell 35,000 units in the first two days of sales.

"Tesco has sold 35k Hudl tablets in the last 2 days, says boss Phil Clarke - may be short on stock next week," tweeted Retail Week exec Jennifer Creevy.

Of course, the figures pale in comparison to Apple launches, but they are impressive nonetheless, since the Hudl has been on sale in a single country for just 48 hours before it hit the 35k mark. What’s more, Creevy notes that Tesco might be short on stock next week, which indicates that sales were better than expected.

With a £119 and a 1440x900 screen, the little Hudl seems to be getting a lot of love from frugal Tesco shoppers and reviewers. It’s not getting the best possible review scores, as its quad A9 processor with Mali 400 graphics doesn’t appear to be very snappy and its cameras are subpar, so it can’t match the Nexus 7 for performance, but then again it is significantly cheaper.

A few interesting research reports were published over the past few days and they seem to prove what many in the tech press have been saying for much of 2013 – dirt cheap tablets are disrupting the market. It was relatively easy to dismiss white-box tablet makers from mainland China last year, but just a year later they seem to be making a killing.

According to NPD DisplaySearch, shipments of tablet PC panels started recovering in July, but much of the growth is coming from 7-inch panels, which made up a staggering 49 percent of all panel shipments.

“Low-priced white-box brands accounted for 59 percent of 7-inch panels and 43 percent of all tablet PC panel shipments in July,” said NPD.

Apple is of course still the biggest player and one in four tablet panels ends up in an iPad. However, this is changing, too. The current iPad line-up is ready for a refresh, so demand is pretty soft. In fact, according to another report out of ABI Research, Android tablets surpassed iOS tablets in the second quarter, while revenues reached parity and the average selling price of the iPad tumbled 17 percent, thanks to the iPad mini.

“Smaller 7-inch class tablets are finally the majority of shipments,” said ABI’s Jeff Orr. “The 7.9-inch iPad mini represented about 60 percent of total iPad shipments and 49 percent of iPad-related device revenues in the quarter.”

What’s more, Apple’s iPad line accounted for just 50 percent of worldwide end-user revenues. Naturally, Apple’s numbers will improve in Q4, as it introduces the new iPad 5 and iPad mini 2.

The rumour mill is happily chugging along, too. There’s talk of lower than expected Nexus 7 2 shipments, weak sales of flagship Android tablets and so on. It all paints a rather bleak picture for big brand tablets who rushed into the $199 tablet space after the Nexus 7 hype last summer. A few analysts like Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities told CNBC that the tablet market has already overheated and it will slow down fast. Pacific Crest recently slashed its 2013 tablet forecast from 169 million units to 151 million. Most of the cut came from Apple.

People who are in the market for a cheap 7-incher want exactly that – a cheap tablet. Not a $229 Nexus 7, Tegra Note, Asus MeMO Pad, or god forbid an Intel Windows tablet. They want something at half the price, they are not interested in value added features, gimmicks or top of the line performance – just a nice screen.

Ironically, supermarket chain Tesco seems to have figured it out before the heavyweights - it's a race to the bottom. As of today it’s selling a £119 tablet with a 1440x900 screen, no bells and whistles. Leave it to a grocer to teach the tech industry a lesson.

British supermarket Tesco has started issuing its own tablet as a rival to Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and Google's Nexus 7. The Hudl is now available both online and in stores across the country.

It is a cheap as chips 7-inch tablet which will sell for £119 along with 119 Tesco Clubcard points, and you'll get an IPS LCD scratch-resistant display, which offers a 1440 x 990 HD resolution (242ppi). The Tesco Hudl tablet features 16GB internal storage, expandable to 32GB through a microSD card, a 3-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front camera and a 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 1GB RAM.

It also has dual-band Wi-Fi, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and a battery life said to last up to nine hours of video playback. Measuring 128.8 x 192.8 x 9.85mm and weighing 370g, the Tesco Hudl comes in black, purple, red and blue.

Attention bezel haters everywhere, Asus has a neat little 8-inch tablet with a spacious 8-inch screens and tiny bezels, much like the iPad mini.

The MeMo Pad 8 was shown off earlier this month, but Asus stopped short of announcing the price or shedding more light on the spec sheet. It features a 1280x800 IPS screen, which doesn’t sound too impressive these days. The processor comes from Asus, well, least it has Asus written somewhere on it, we have no idea who actually builds it. The RK101 is a 1.6GHz quad-core SoC with Mali 400MP4 graphics, but we don’t know anything about the CPU cores. It might be an A9 part, but then again we might be looking at an A7.

The tablet has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage and a microSD slot, along with 16GB of Asus cloud storage. It’s got a 5-megapixel camera and an HD front facing camera and it measures 212.8x127.4x9.9mm, which is pretty good for an 8-incher, and so is the weight – 350g.

However, the price isn’t all that great. At €249 it’s pricier than the Nexus or the Tegra Note, not to mention the Tesco Hudl – yet all of them trump it in one way or another. Even at €199 it wouldn’t look very tempting, but the price is not official yet , although a dozen or so German retailers are listing it at €249. If they are wrong, so are we.

Several months ago rumours of a Tesco tablet started popping up in the UK. For those unfamiliar with Tesco, it is a huge supermarket chain in Britain – not exactly a tech player. However, in addition to groceries Tesco sells a lot of gadgets and now it has a rather impressive tablet of its own.

The Hudl tablet is priced at just £119, but many Tesco shoppers will be able to get it for even less, thanks to loyalty schemes. It has a 7-inch 1440x900 screen, Android 4.2.2, undisclosed quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 16GB of storage and a microSD slot. Due to the low price we assume it is powered by a Cortex A7 or A5 processor. It is possible that it's an A9, which would make it an epic deal.

In any case, it is a steal at £119, let alone less than that, or less than £99– which is exactly what many Tesco Clubcard holders will pay. Mind you, the good old first generation Nexus 7 features a 1280x800 screen, as does Nvidia’s new Tegra Note. Many cheap 7-inch tablets still ship with 1024x600 or 1024x768 screens, making the Hudl stand out.

This sort of devices is what keeps Google, Asus, Nvidia and traditional PC vendors awake at night. Last year we all praised the Nexus 7 for its $199 price tag, this year we’re seeing more and more sub-$149 tablets and some reports indicate that Google’s new Nexus 7 just isn’t selling well – as many users opt for even cheaper devices.

The Hudl is a great example that it is possible to come up with a dirt cheap product that doesn’t have a terrible spec. With the full weight of Tesco’s massive infrastructure behind it, the Hudl could be a winner – at least in the UK.